In this youth group session you’ll find individual blocks that you can turn into a single devotional or into a whole series on “Prayer: When God Is Silent,” covering the topic over several evenings.

Movie tip: “I Still Believe”

⏱️ 1 day or 1 week beforehand

Watch the movie “I Still Believe” with your teenagers, or encourage parents to watch it with their teens, to get into a conversation about unanswered prayer and share their personal experiences with it.

Unanswered prayer is at the heart of the movie “I Still Believe” (trailer).

Game “Dice Domino”

⏱️ 20 minutes (including reflection questions)

Rolling dice on a blue surface
Group game Dice Domino (symbolic image). Photo Edge2Edge Media, Unsplash.

Materials

  • Several sets of dice, enough for one set per 2 to 3 teenagers
  • Decide on 3 different target numbers the teams have to add up to (for example 123, 234, 345). You can also set just 2 numbers if you can’t or don’t want to give the game that much time. (Count on about 5 minutes of playing time per number.)
  • Paper and pens
  • A calculator for the leaders to check the sums
  • A prize for the winners

How to play

Divide the teens into groups of 2 to 3 and have the groups spread out around the room. Give each team a set of dice, paper and pens. On “go,” give them the first of the target numbers they have to reach by adding up their dice rolls. The teams have to write down every number they roll.

The goal of the game is to add up the rolled numbers until they hit exactly the number you set. If they go over, they have to subtract 25 points from their last total and keep going until they reach the number. If they overshoot the target three times, after the third time they may roll one die at a time until they hit the number without going over. They keep trying until they have rolled the exact number.

As soon as they reach the number, they bring their list to a leader, who adds it up with a calculator and confirms that they reached the number correctly. If they’re wrong, they have to start over. If they’re right, they get the next number to add up to.

The first team to complete all the numbers wins.

Reflection questions

A student gives a presentation to her classmates and her teacher
Questions for groups and teenagers (symbolic image). Photo Kampus Production, Pexels.

Questions for the groups

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How many times do you think you rolled the dice in your game?
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How nervous were you when you were close to the target number?
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What was it like when you went over and lost 25 points?
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How did it feel when you added it up wrong and had to start all over again?

Devotional

⏱️ 10 minutes

💬 What do rolling dice and adding numbers have to do with prayer? For me, the game has similarities to prayer as we often understand it.

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What do you think about that statement?
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How do you feel when you pray? Do you hope that the way you pray can somehow influence the result and get God on your side? Maybe through a formula? Or through how often you pray?
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Why do you pray? What moves you to pray?
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What if God answered every request with “yes”?

▶️ There are many reasons why our prayers aren’t answered, and if all our prayers were answered with “yes,” it could end in disaster. Watch this scene from “Bruce Almighty” together.

There are many reasons why our prayers aren’t answered, and if all our prayers were answered with yes, it could end in disaster. Clip from the movie Bruce Almighty.

💬 Like in these scenes, we often pray for things so that we feel better or look better. Sometimes it looks like we keep adding up our dice wrong and starting over. God knows that, and he will answer our prayers in a way that brings us closer to him.

What it takes for God to hear

A woman with her hands folded, eyes closed
Prayer: what to do when God is silent? Youth group session (symbolic image). Photo Ben White, Unsplash.

⏱️ 15 minutes

📝 Hand out the worksheet and have the teens fill it in. Print the worksheet below or write it on a flipchart: for every passage, they note in their own words what condition it names for God to answer prayer.

Worksheet: When does God hear prayer?

Bible passage → Condition for an answer to prayer (read the passage and write down the condition in your own words)

1 John 5:12-15

Praying according to God’s will includes:

“Why doesn’t God answer all my prayers?” “Why doesn’t he always help?”

My answer: ______

💬 Now we have a good list of reasons that move God to hear a prayer or not. But it isn’t calculable like the numbers on a die. I can’t just throw a few numbers together to arrive at the right result.

God’s “no” or “wait”

⏱️ 15 minutes

💬 The Bible tells us about people who really did live according to God’s will, but whose wishes God did not grant.

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Can you think of people in the Bible whose prayers went unanswered, or whose wishes God did not grant? (David, Paul, Jesus)

David

💬 Backstory: David has done terrible things. He slept with the wife of one of his officers, who was also a good friend of his. She gets pregnant. So that his friend won’t find out, David has him sent to the front line, where he dies. God sends the prophet Nathan to David to tell him that this will have consequences.

📖 Read 2 Samuel 12:13-18

💬 God forgives David, and David hopes to change God’s mind through prayer. But God has decided. The child dies.

📖 Read Acts 13:22-23

💬 These verses show us that David, despite his failures, was a man after God’s heart. So God really had forgiven him. And still, his answer to David’s prayer for his child’s healing was no.

Paul

📖 Read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

💬 Paul had given his life to God completely. He was ready to do anything for God. In verse 10 we read that he took on abuse, loss, persecution and fear. And he asks God three times to free him from the “messenger of Satan” that torments him. But God answers, “My grace is sufficient for you.” That’s heavy.

Jesus

📖 Read John 17:20-22

💬 To this day, this prayer of Jesus has not been answered with a yes. Here he asks for the unity of Christians. When we look around, that unity isn’t there. So many churches, and so many denominations within the church. Even in our own town, the churches can’t manage to work together and build God’s kingdom with each other. Everyone insists on their own theology. Even within congregations, Christians’ views often diverge widely. And Jesus prays for unity so that the world will believe that the Father sent him.

📖 Read Luke 22:41-43 and Matthew 26:36-45

💬 Jesus pleads with the Father that he won’t have to die on the cross. At the same time, he wants to carry out the Father’s will. But the verses show very clearly that Jesus was terrified. He pleads with the Father three times and is completely at the end of his physical and emotional strength. He couldn’t bear it. If he had been able to decide independently of the Father, he would not have gone to the cross for us. But because he and the Father are one, he could walk that road and sacrificed himself for us. The Father answered his pleading with no, and in doing so spoke his yes over us. Yes, I want you. Yes, I want a relationship with you.

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What are your thoughts on this? What questions does it raise for you?

God’s will, not our will

⏱️ 20 minutes

💬 The Bible and our personal experience make one thing clear:

  • Some of our requests are not answered the way we wish.
  • Even answered prayers raise unsettling questions. Why was Peter set free while James, the brother of John, was executed (Acts 12:2)? Why was Jesus allowed to escape as a toddler while countless other innocent children were slaughtered by Herod (Matthew 2:16)? Why were some of the heroes of faith in the Bible enabled to conquer kingdoms, administer justice, gain what was promised and shut the mouths of lions (Hebrews 11:33), while others were mocked, flogged, imprisoned, stoned, sawed in two, tempted and put to death by the sword (verses 36 and 37)?
  • Back to Jesus and his request not to have to “drink” the cup: he knew what was coming, was terrified, and at the same time trusted the Father that everything would be good in the end. The disciples, though, had no idea.
  • Our prayer life often feels like Holy Saturday: we have prayed for something, sometimes over and over, but we haven’t received an answer. When we finally reach Easter Sunday, we understand everything that led to this point; we understand why God waited until then to reveal his plan.
  • We shouldn’t stop praying because some of our prayers stay unanswered. If we pray only to get answers, God becomes a shopping list; we want him only for his power and not for who he is.
  • God wants to know everything about us. He wants a relationship in which we share everything with him, in which he is such a big part of our lives that we can’t stand to spend time without him.

📖 Read 1 John 5:12-15

📝 Take out your worksheet again.

💬 Praying according to God’s will includes:

When we pray, we need to keep in mind that God answers prayers that glorify his name. We can’t pray in our own interest and expect God to grant our requests.

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How would you answer the question on the worksheet now? (Why doesn’t God answer all my prayers? Why doesn’t he always help?)

📝 Answer the questions for yourself.

Further reading and inspiration

English version: September 2026